The present invention relates to an automatic control system for the operation of cokery machinery, in particular, the running, stopping and working operations of the traveling machines used therein, such as a pusher machine, a charging car, a coke guide and a quenching car, the operation of a stop control apparatus for stopping the respective traveling machines highly accurately at predetermined positions, and the control of auxiliary cokery machinery including a quenching tower, a coke wharf, exhausters of deduster, etc.
The discharging works of red hot coke from the oven chamber are accomplished by repeating predetermined works through the consecutive operations of respective traveling macbines to such an oven chamber as has been determined in advance on the basis of the working schedule. When the respective traveling machines are to conduct their predetermined works, moreover, they are required to proceed their works while communicating with one another to confirm their relative works and positions.
In the prior art, the mutual communications and confirmations of those traveling machines have been effected either by the naked eye or by the use of telephones or radio lines. With such a communication method, however, a false report can occur, and the confirmation of the relative positions cannot be completely ensured.
Therefore, a number of remote controls for the running of a coke quenching car locomotive have been tried, including a recent method in which the running of a series of traveling machines are to be automatically controlled.
Nevertheless, such automatic control is generally directed to a method in which the respective traveling machines, equipped with transmitters and receivers, are controlled by sending an instruction through a relay from one of the traveling machines to another, or to a method in which the positions of the traveling machines are confirmed and the working conditions of the same are controlled by a ground location detector. This makes it remarkably difficult to automatically control with safety and without fail the discharging works which are located in hot and restrictive areas in which much dust and water vapor is generated.
If, for example, the remote control of the quenching car locomotive is taken up, the quenching car locomotive is stopped at a predetermined position relative to a coke guide, is started in synchronism with the pusher ram speed of a pusher machine, is run toward a quenching tower after the red hot coke is loaded in the quenching car and is stopped at a predetermined position in the quenching tower, in which it is exposed to quenching water. After this quenching operation, the quenching car locomotive is moved to an empty coke wharf for dumping the quenching cokes into the coke wharf, and is again run toward the coke guide for coke loading purposes. After a series of these automatic operations, the quenching car locomotive detects during its operation a number of fixed points for conducting decelerating and stopping operations suitable for the fixed points. Since the method under consideration is dependent upon the track conditions such as slipperiness, however, it is difficult to accurately control the running of the quenching car locomotive and to stop it accurately.
In this regard, since the track of the quenching car locomotive fluctuates horizontally and vertically more than 200 mm with respect to relative distances from horizontal and vertical reference lines, the distance between ground detectors, indicating the fixed points, and an on-board detector, carried on the quenching car locomotive for detecting the fixed points when it passes over the ground detectors, is changes without any interruption so that the detecting accuracy cannot be maintained.
Therefore, in a coking plant which is initially constructed to include provision for the remote control of the quenching car locomotive, the track is made so firm as to maintain the detecting accuracy. In order to maintain such accuracy, however, it is necessary to prepare a strong foundation, which involves high costs. On the other hand, this reinforcement is operationally impossible for an existing coking plant and even if the detecting accuracy of the ground detector and the on-board detector is maintained, control by the mutual detections of the on-board detectors of the coke guide and the quenching car locomotive cannot yield the required stopping accuracy because of the short braking distance.
As a method of eliminating the aforedescribed defects, there has been devised with a considerable effect the so-called "relative address detecting method", in which the running distance of the quenching car locomotive is read out to locate its position. In this method, however, the idler wheels of the quenching car locomotive rotate along the track so that the running distance is read out in terms of the wheel turns. This inevitably induces errors resulting from the slippage or the like of such idle wheels. Therefore, the ground detectors are disposed at several positions over the entire length of the runnning path of the quenching car locomotive so that any errors from the absolute positions may be remedied when those ground detectors are passed over.
Thus, the aforementioned method has succeeded in reducing the number of ground detectors more than other approaches employed by the prior art but has failed to provide a basic solution for the problem which is made likely between ground detectors and the on-board detector.
Moreover, in the event the electric power is interrupted, the quenching car locomotive cannot be located because of the running distance during such power interruption. It therefore becomes necessary to manually run the quenching car locomotive to a reference point and to renew the running operation from such a reference point.
Also, the traveling machines generally used adopt an A.C. electric motor as the drive source. However, the traveling machines using such an A.C. electric motor cannot have their speeds controlled because the r.p.m. of the electric motor is determined in accordance with the frequency of the power source.
In the prior art, the braking device provided for stopping those traveling machines comprises a wheel tread brake including a brake shoe, a device for braking the rotary shaft of a drive mechanism by means of a thrust brake or the like, and so on.
When the braking operations are carried out by any of these brake devices, the traveling machines are stopped at their destinations by manually interrupting the braking forces while visually confirming the destinations.
However, when an automatically operated controller is utilized introduced in recent years, it becomes remarkably difficult, when using such a braking system, to effect the stoppage accurately at each destination if the traveling machines are to be automatically stopped.
For example, if a braking force is applied at a predetermined point before the destination, the wheels may slip after stopping their rotation. As a result, it makes automatic control difficult to expect a constant distance from a braking point to a stopping point due to reliance on track conditions such as wetness caused by rain or water, oil blots or track level.
Therefore, there has been proposed with a considerable effect a method by which a D.C. electric motor is used as the drive source of the traveling machines, wherein the r.p.m. of the electric motor is stepwise reduced from a predetermined point before the destination and wherein a braking force is applied after the speed is decreased to a predetermined low level and at a point where the distance to the destination reached is at a predetermined value. However, such method has still failed to solve the problem in that the error in the distance from a braking point to a stopping point is not made constant in accordance with the track conditions, although it is reduced. Moreover, the cycle times required for the discharging are elongated because the speed is stepwise reduced. Still moreover, a high expenditures are required for reconstructing the drive mechanism and for installing a rectifier.